Ultrabook Update And Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon

Intel’s Ivy Bridge chipsets will be available in new Ultrabooks very soon. There are persistent rumors that the first ones will be on the market after an announcement on June 5 at Computex, an important laptop trade show in Taiwan.

Ultrabook is the marketing term for 13”-14” laptops that are ultra-light and ultra-thin. Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processor provides a significant boost to battery life and performance. If you’ve been thinking of buying a notebook, it’s almost time to start shopping.

Soon it will be commonplace for notebooks to weigh 3-4 pounds, with slim profiles and solid state hard drives. Windows 7 takes full advantage of the hardware improvements, allowing an Ultrabook to resume from sleep in three or four seconds. The fast start and speedy performance in a light and thin package makes an Ultrabook perform more like an iPad than anything you’ve experienced up to now with a notebook.

The gadget sites are tracking information about dozens of new or updated notebook models that will get their official launches in the next 2-3 months. Random example: HP announced new Ultrabooks like the HP Envy Spectre 14 – clad in a striking Gorilla Glass cover – and less expensive “Sleekbooks” with similar thin profiles but running AMD chips instead of the “official” Intel chipsets required for Ultrabook branding.

Personally, I get very excited by the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon, pictured above, which will be released later this summer. A few days ago Lenovo released details of a number of new Ultrabooks and other laptops that will appear on the market in a couple of weeks, but all the attention centered on the Thinkpad X1 Carbon. It’s in a carbon fiber case, has a 14” 1600×900 display, and weighs just three pounds. It has lots of premium features to justify what will undoubtedly be a premium price but what jumps out at me is the TrackPoint pointing stick in the middle of the keyboard. I have a hearty dislike for touchpads and I’ve missed that little red eraser nub in my last couple of notebooks. Here’s a preview of the Thinkpad X1 Carbon.

[…] The X1 Carbon starts at $1,399 for a 1.7Ghz Intel Core i5 Ivy Bridge processor with 4Gb of RAM and a 128Gb SSD. More money buys more memory and more storage. That puts the X1 Carbon’s price firmly up in the stratosphere – but it also looks like it delivers elegance and performance in return for the high price tag. (I’ll be ordering one on the 21st. I’ve been waiting for months.) […]

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